1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to a connector assembly of stacked modular jacks, especially to a connector assembly having a conditioning unit including a circuit board with magnetic conditioning components mounted on it to condition the signals passing through the connector assembly.
2. Description of the Related Art
The signal transmission speed in a network depends on the conductivity of the cables, the operation speed of the workstations or servers signals transmitting, and the condition of the environment in which computers and cables located. Usually the signals transmitted by cables are easily affected because of the diversity and unpredictability of the environment cables meet. The best way to avoid any noise interference is shielding the cable and device all the time. However, in high frequency and speed situation, any necessary connection is always a deficiency to cause signal interfered by the outer noise for perfect transmission. And the cost for a perfect electrical shield is expensive too. Besides, crosstalk always happens between two parallel signal-transmitting conductors. Thus, the signals transmitted by cables or wires should be conditioned first before they are used in any electrical device like computers. Especially, to dispose a conditioning component, such as a common mode choke coil, filter circuit or transformer, into the I/O connector of these devices is a good way because the I/O connector is always the last or important part of the necessary connections should be well shielded for a perfect transmission. Sakamoto et al. U.S. Pat. No. 5,139,442 introduces such a modular jack connector having a built-in common-mode choke coil. However, to use wires of the coil as contactors of the modular jack connector causes more complicated assembling process costing high and being time-consuming. Therefore U.S. Pat. No. 5,687,233 issued to Loudermilk et al. discloses a built-in modularized printed circuit board containing a noise suppressing electronic element like transformer is received in the modular jack connector. It is obviously laborsaving because the contactors of the connector are mounted to the printed circuit board after the filter circuit and related electronic elements are mounted onto the printed board in advance. The method adopted in Loudermilk et al. needs to be improved due to its still complicated process to assemble the printed board and the connector housing. Especially the isolated contactors of the connector should be well sustained when assembled into the connector housing together with the printed board. And in the multi-port application, the increasing contactors needed to be mounted onto the motherboard will make it much more difficult to dispose or assemble the built-in printed board. U.S. Pat. No. 5,587,884 discloses a subassembly inserted into the housing of the modular jack connector. The subassembly includes a front insert member having contact terminals and a rear insert member having a printed board with conditioning components mounted thereon. Better support from these two insert members will effectively sustain the terminals and other components when the subassembly is inserted into the connector housing and fasten the assembling process. However, much more procedures are needed to manufacture the subassembly and most of them like insert-molding cost expensively. Besides, new parts are needed in the multi-port application. Minich U.S. Pat. No. 6,022,245 shows a modular connector having two stack plug receiving ports. Two retainers hold terminals in the connector housing and a printed board has filter components and an edge connector connecting the printed board to the motherboard where the modular connector is seated. After the retainers and terminals are properly installed into the housing, the printed circuit board is installed into the housing and ends of terminals is resiliently engaged onto the printed board. Installing support to every terminal is enough again and simplifying process will be adopted to produce each of necessary parts. However, in this case, too many parts are needed and the assembling process is still complicated and labor consuming. And more fixture mechanism in the housing is needed to put each of these parts in position.
Furthermore, Morana et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,193,560 shows a connector assembly has rows of terminal arrays each row having a common dielectric carrier. The carriers are installed one behind the other with guide sections disposed thereon being guided along common guides of the housing. And the housing has a resilient latch arm that extends between the terminal arrays to hold the carriers one behind the other. The way to assemble similar modularized terminal carriers into the connector is not too complicating. However, the retention of the resilient latch arm is not good enough to hold the dielectric carriers in the housing because the resilient latch arm are easily touchable and may be yielded or damaged in the future without any protection. This causes unreliable connection of the terminal carriers and this connector while reworking is needed to repair parts of the connector.
In conclusion, it is understandable that most of methods adopted by these prior arts mentioned above have a complicated process, especially when assembling. Meanwhile, it is difficult to hold parts reliably in position again after some of them are dismantled and fixed. Some of parts disclosed in prior art are vulnerable when removing from the housing. That means it is better not to rework or repair on them even though some of them need to change.
Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide a connector assembly which has simplified parts to assemble to each other and these parts are detachable easily under reliable situation.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a connector assembly with parts that are releasable using the flexible retention means being well protected from easy access, yielding due to long term use or failure caused by the unexpectedly broken.
To obtain the above objects, a connector assembly including a housing configured to two mating ports to receive their complementary connector is formed. A conditioning unit is installed into the housing and disposed between the mating ports. The conditioning unit includes a circuit board having conditioning components and two terminal modules surface mounted thereon. Each of the terminal modules has terminals insert-molded therein and is mounted on one side of the circuit board to make one end of terminals exposed into the corresponding mating port separately.
Specifically, a pair of flexible latching portions is formed on two side edges of the rear side of the housing respectively. And a stopping portion is formed underneath every latching portion and extending a predetermined distance longer than the length of the latching portion. At one edge of the circuit board, a notch is formed corresponding to the latching portion of the housing. When assembling, the conditioning unit is inserted into the housing and the edge of the circuit board snug in a guiding groove formed on the inward side of the sidewall and the latching portion is then engaged with its corresponding notch to fix the unit in position. For such an arrangement, the conditional unit is easily secured to the housing and finally settled between two mating port to ease the assembly of two terminal modules for each mating port. And the latching portion is easily detached from the notch of the circuit board by a tool to simply any rework or repair process while the stopping portion will restrict and protect the flexible latching portion from being overstressed or over-bending.
Other objects, advantages and novel features of the invention will become more apparent from the following detailed description of the present embodiment when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.